Royal Letters, Imperial Documents: A Japanese, Korean and Thai Trialogue for aGlobal History of Inter-State Relations
ABSTRACTS:
Bhawan Ruangsilp (Chulalongkorn University)
Siamese-Burmese Diplomacy: a Study of the Royal Letters of the 1630s
Most studies on the early modern Thai-Burmese relations focus on the aspect of war. In 1564, thegreat Burmese King Bayinnaung defeated the Thais. The Burmese suzerainty was successfully
challenged by the fight for Thai independence led by King Naresuan (ruled 1590-1605). Between thetwo large-scale Siamese-Burmese wars of the 1560s and the 1760s, with the latter raised Ayutthaya
to the ground, there were series of smaller-scale wars between the two kingdoms but also periods ofpeace.
This presentation will explore the Siamese-Burmese relations in peacetime through another tool of
conducting these relations, namely diplomacy. During the reign of King Prasatthong (ruled 1629-1656),
there are secondary records of a few royal letters in exchange between the royal courts of Siam andBurma from the 1630s. Their contents were mentioned in the royal chronicles of Ayutthaya andrecorded in a Dutch-VOC document. Taken as my point of departure, diplomacy is a way to allow
enemies to have dialogue and preserve peace. In this presentation, I will attempt, by analyzing theseroyal letters, to ascertain how the Siamese and Burmese tried to find a common ground and maintaina balance in their peacetime relations.
Dhiravat na Pombejra
Chaophraya Phrakhlang’s 1703 letter on behalf of King Seua to the Hoge Regering: trade, treaty andthe royal command
This paper will discuss a letter written in 1703 by the Chaophya Phrakhlang, minister for foreign affairs
and the treasury, on behalf of King Seua of Siam (r.1703-1709) to the VOC Governor-General andCouncil of the Indies (Hoge Regering) in Batavia. At the beginning of this reign, the VOC sought a quick
renewal of the Dutch-Siamese Treaty and Alliance of Peace initially concluded in August 1664 andrenewed, with addenda, in 1688. The process was to prove far from smooth, as Gideon Tant the Dutch
opperhoofd in Ayutthaya tried and failed to obtain a royal audience to discuss the treaty. The letter
discussed here presents the phrakhlang’s side of the story, and covers the connected issues ofprotocol, precedent and the royal command. The letter goes on to accuse the opperhoofd ofcorruption as well as ignorance of Siamese customs and trading practice, requesting that he bereplaced.

KOO Bumjin
Languages of the Qing Investiture Letters for Chosŏn before the Conquest of China
The Qing rulers, just like those of the preceeding empires, abided by the diplomatic convention ofimperial investiture of Chosŏn's king, consort and heir apparent. The letters of investiture issued bythe Manchu emperors, as is well known, had a distinct feature in terms of language: they were written
not only in Chinese but also in Manchu and/or Mongol. Visually and vividly testifying to thismultilingualism are the bilingual (Manchu and Chinese) letters of investiture, still extant in Seoul, thatwere produced in the early 18th century. It is still fair enough, however, to ask whether or not the Qing
investiture letters for Chosŏn before 1644 were also multilingual, taking into account the facts thatthe language of correspondences between Seoul and Mukden (=Shenyang) was not Manchu but

Chinese, and that all the extant imperial letters addressed to Chosŏn's king of the pre-conquest era,in stark contrast with the bilingualism of the post-conquest imperial letters, are found to be in Chinese
only. This report explores this question by a close investigation of the contemporary accounts of theinvestiture letters.

JUNG Donghun
Imperial Word, Spoken and Written: Two Dimensions of Sino-Korean Relations in the early 15th
centuryThis study examines the process by which the Ming Emperor's orders were delivered to Chosŏn.
Imperial orders were sometimes documented by the hands of secretaries, and sometimes deliveredin the form of oral messages by the eunuchs.
The imperial edicts addressed national issues like horse trade, initiative for Jurchen. It was about thediplomacy of the public sphere. On the other hand, through oral messages emperors requested
beautiful virgins, clever eunuchs, falcons for hunting, delicious seafood and even female cooks tosatisfy their appetite. Compared to the former, private interest is strongly reflected.
The diplomatic agents of the Ming Dynasty can be divided into two groups. One is who are in chargeof the emperor's writings, namely the civil officials. The other group who conveyed the emperor’sword is mainly eunuchs. While Chosŏn was a partner of public diplomacy and a good companion of
the Chinese world order for the former, for the latter, Chosŏn was an indefinite spring that would fill
the emperor's private desires. Contrary to the expectations of neighboring countries, in the first halfof the 15th century, the latter was an even more important issue for the individual Ming emperor.
However, the official records of the Ming Dynasty left no hidden image of the emperor. Since theliterati of Ming court could not intervene in the oral message of the emperor, it may have been
impossible to recognize this dark side at all. Sometimes the Ming historians conducted moreaggressive manipulation. They “corrected” the emperor's "incorrect" instructions to the opposite, andtried to pass them on to posterity.